When Workers Die: U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace

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WHEN WORKERS DIE
U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Deaths in Workplace
By DAVID BARSTOW

Published: December 22, 2003

Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive — all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws.
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Paul Bakewell, who recently retired after 26 years as an OSHA inspector and supervisor in Colorado, said that inspectors meet so much resistance that the very notion of pursuing criminal charges soon disappears — especially since killing a worker is only a misdemeanor under federal law.

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Mr. McCann, acting regional administrator in Chicago during the early 1980's, was an early champion of criminal prosecutions. He had a simple, no-nonsense approach: If a death resulted from a willful violation, it should be referred to the Justice Department without delay. But in the early days of the Reagan administration, he said in a recent interview, that policy brought a clear rebuke from OSHA's new political appointees. Twelve times he sought prosecutions. "They were all thrown out."

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During the two decades examined by The Times, in 17 states, the District of Columbia and three territories, there was not a single prosecution for willful violations that killed 423 workers.



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/22/national/22OSHA.html?pagewanted=1&hp

[schultzee]

1. Now you have to hire an attorney and go after them in a civil suit.

[barbaraann]

2. And then you have to find and pay expert witnesses.

And, sadly, I think a lot of people find that is impossible.